6710 Grand

I was jittery on opening night. This could be the moment to make or break us. How we did tonight would determine the success or failure of our plan to cure boredom. I didn’t expect to wipe it out in one night, but a disaster on our first night would mean we’d wasted our time. At least that’s what I thought. Crazy Angie was not so pessimistic. She was jubilantly sweeping the floor. “I think I’ve finally got this down, Robin. Take a look at all of my piles!” She was so proud, I hated to burst her bubble. “That’s great, Angie. Now, if you can sweep them together into one big pile, we can put them in the trash.” She frowned. “Why would I do that? If I got rid of the dirt, I’d have nothing to sweep up tomorrow.” She went on sweeping. I decided not to respond. I didn’t want to ruin her good mood. Nick seemed equally in good spirits. Why shouldn’t he be? It wasn’t his business on the line. “Stop worrying. We’ll be fine,” he said. “I hope so. I just keep thinking no one will come. I mean, we c...

Nick was a better asset than I had ever imagined. He was a veritable library of research on this business. However, I was facing a tough decision about him. Should I try to get the information out of him indirectly, keeping my cards close, or should I trust him and tell him what I want to know and why I want to know it? Crazy Angie and I were in a delicate position. We didn’t exactly have the law on our side. True, we had the necessary paperwork and licensing and they were all legal, but it wasn’t exactly legal for us to have them. If we weren’t careful we could loose it all or even end up (GASP!) incarcerated. Trusting Nick could be dangerous. He would have quite a bit of leverage on us and could do serious damage. Still, we needed to open soon. We needed to get this thing going. I didn’t have time to develop trust or to winkle information out of him. I decided to consult my partner since it affected her too. “Ok, we need to figure this out. What do you think of Nick?” I asked her. “H...

I had to crane my neck just to see his face. Were there people this tall? He must have been near eight feet. Aside from his height, he looked normal. Thin but not skinny, neat in appearance, clean cut, but slightly forbidding. He was intimidating enough to anyone shorter than him, but his expression seemed to say ‘mess with me and I will step on you’. I was sitting on the floor, going through the books. Being especially low to the ground, I felt unbelievably short. I decided to take charge of the situation and mustered up my most confident, authoritative voice. “May I help you?” He looked down as if he just then noticed that I was there. “Oh! Yes! I’m here about the job.” His own voice wasn’t nearly as intimidating as the rest of him. That alone made me feel better, if not taller. I stood up, increasing my confidence. “Great. You are?” “Oh, uh, Nick. Nick Hortnorter.” “Ok, Nick. I’m Robin, the owner. My partner, Crazy Angie is over there. I motioned to where she was inspecting a broom,...

The Authentic Lunatic brought in enough money to finish any leftover construction we needed to do, the cost of supplies, and at least the first pay period for one bartender. If for some reason our bar made no profit, we could at least pay the help before we laid them off. Now, all I had to do was hire one. I had absolutely no idea as to how one went about hiring a bartender. Given that I was only fifteen, I’d never had a job other than babysitting the neighbors. I decided that it might be a good idea to consult someone with experience. I trotted down to Bill’s Bar and Grill to see if Bill was in. It was the middle of the afternoon—not quite Happy Hour, and not very busy. I got a few strange stares from the bar as I sat down, but I did my best to ignore them. Bill was behind the bar, where I expected him to be. He saw me right away and came over. “Whatalya have?” “The usual.” He set a Diet Pepsi down in front of me. I took a big swig and then nearly choked on it. “Whoa! There caffeine i...

Construction was almost over and the decorating was underway. The Reverend was truly working magic with her paintbrush. I’d never seen such a colorful bar (not that I’ve seen many drab ones). The general construction was finished. All that remained was the furniture. I had worked out a deal with Al for bar stools and tables. He and Sarah were getting quite curious about what exactly this bar would be like so I was able to buy him off easy with a few free drinks. He was even going to throw in a cabinet in which to keep our glassware (once we had some). The summer was rapidly approaching. With school almost over as well, Crazy Angie and I were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to spend more time working at the bar. Still, with the crowd we were planning to attract I didn’t think the two of us could handle it alone, especially given the mental capacity of my partner. “We need to hire some bartenders,” I said while gently wiping the sawdust off of our beautiful new marble slab ...

I awoke the next morning to a violent jostling of my entire body. I opened my eyes and saw that it was Crazy Angie trying to rouse me from my slumber. “What? What? Who let you in here?” I shouted to her once I had my bearings. “Your brother,” she said in a frantic rush. “But he said not to tell you it was him if you got mad. So are you mad?” “Uh! What do you want and why does it require you to rattle the insides of my body?” “Ok, good, you’re not mad. Well, I just had to show you this!” She thrust a half crumpled piece of paper in my face. I had to back up just to stay in focus. It had scribbled writing in big letters on it. “What is it?” “It’s an advertisement.” “For what?” “For the arteest.” She mocked a French accent (very poorly, I might ad, but what can you expect from a lunatic who has never been outside the state of Missouri?). I took the paper from her and read it: “Wanted: French Arteest to unborify a bar. Please call soon! It then listed our contact i...

Things were going amazingly well for Crazy Angie and me that I could hardly believe it.  I kept waiting for something to go wrong.  Our liquor license wasn’t completely established yet, so that was foremost in my mind.  I must admit that it had occurred to me that Judge Larson might have agreed to help us simply in a drunken stupor.  This may well have been the case, and then we would quite frankly be in a bar without a license.  You can’t have a bar without a license!  That’s the simple truth of it!  I tried not to worry about it.  If nothing else, I would simply head over to Bill’s Bar and Grill and seek the judge out myself, and demand that keep up his end of the bargain.  Of course, if he refused, there was nothing I could do, but I wasn’t about to let that get in my way.  We had come this far.  I wasn’t about to give up so easily now.   Aside from the liquor licen...

The bar needed a tremendous amount of work.  I hardly knew where to begin.  Even after all of the cleaning, the building was in horrible disrepair.  The windows were cracked, the floorboards were creaky, there was no water into the building, there was no actual bar (which is kind of important in this line of work), and various other odds and ends that needed fixing up before we could even think about opening.  Given that this building was just walls, I decided that Crazy Angie and I needed to formulate some type of design.  We needed to decide how we wanted the place laid out.   “Ok,” I began.  “We have to figure out just what we need in this place.” “Whaddaya mean?” “Well, we can’t just have a bar and stools.  We need to decide if we want to have a kitchen, a bathroom, entertainment facilities, stuff like that.” “Oh.  Yeah, I think all that stuff sounds good.” “Ok, well it takes a little more work...

Crazy Angie and I went back to Jim Silo’s office and paid him for our building.  I signed the title, given that there could be no meeting of the minds with someone like Angie, since she had no mind.  It was all completely legal.  We were now the proud owners of 6710 Grand Boulevard—a bar.   The place was a wreck.  It was pretty much just four walls and a roof (bonus!).  We got to work sprucing the place up right away.  I did most of the work.  Crazy Angie had one task, sweeping the floor.  She had quite a bit of trouble.  I now know what a mistake I made in putting that request upon her.  She couldn’t figure out which way to hold it or just how to coordinate the actual sweeping.  Then there was the dirt—what on earth to do with it?  She was absolutely pitiful.  Needless to say, I did the sweeping—and the mopping, scrubbing, cleansing, scouring, disi...

I hate big banks.  They seem to find every possible way to charge people to access their own money.  I mean, don’t they make enough money on interest from loaning out my money?  Why should I have to pay to make a cash withdrawal from the teller line when the ATM is out of order?  That just doesn’t seem right.  Why should I pay them for not keeping enough money in my savings account?  Shouldn’t they be paying me to let them loan out my money to other people?  I won’t go on any further about banks, but I will say that it was my dislike for large financial institutions that led me to the local credit union.   I already had a very miniscule savings account there so I thought it would be most convenient for me to remain their customer.   I walked in the door and waited at the receptionist’s desk.  The receptionist was a young woman with big hair and long nails.  She was chewing gum v...